In the Light of the New Moon
by Grand Phoenix
Summary: In between timelines in her quest to save Madoka from the tragic fate of the Puella Magi, Homura has a conversation with a peculiar young man. Although at first glance it would appear to be of little significance, their encounter will leave ripples that will span universes. [companion piece to "In the Shadow of the Moon"]
1. Chapter 1

**Notes1:** Hot damn, it's been a while, hasn't it? I don't really have any excuse to give other than the usual procrastination, depression, and other life things. However, since I got my new job last month, I've been saving up money and with a bit of it I'm going to slowly build up a collection of manga and other things I might find use for in and outside of fanfiction. I've come into possession of the first volumes of Madoka Magica and a peculiar story called _Homura's Revenge!_ , the latter which I was going to pass on for much later until I read that it's a spin-off and screams of temporal shenanigans. I couldn't let that chance slip by.  
 **Notes2:** And here is this story, which took at least two days to type out. It's very surprising that I could pull off a Stephen King in that short amount of time. (Now me typing out a novel in two-three days like he did with one of his books - yeah, fat chance of that happening!) It started out as a really short poem that I wrote on a notepad at work during the start of my training, and for a time it was really going to be about...other characters that would make an appearance post- _A Passing Glance_ , rather than just Homura. However, as I've since picked up a couple manga, things changed and the end result is what you see here.  
 **Notes3:** For now, I've decided to leave the poem out because it doesn't fit the overall tone of this chapter. There will be an epilogue that will be somewhat spoiler-ish in regards to a future "inheritors" chapter and later installments in APG.  
 **Notes4:** Fun fact: The way the OC speaks is very much like how I talk and joke around whilst playing Heroes of the Storm, because it's better to be a jester than a raging, toxic teammate piling on the salt.

* * *

"Back for another round, little miss?"

Homura snaps her head up from the ground at her feet to the sound of the voice breaching her thoughts. At the young man in the purple shirt and ripped jeans lounging on the bench—or, rather, he looked as though he lying on his back and ready to slide off at any given notice and, still, not care if he fell. His vocal intrusion is so sudden, so clear-cut, that for a few scant seconds she didn't know what to say; and when she did, she couldn't find her voice to give them the life they deserved. So she wanted to, but instead, all she managed was a dumb, owlish, stuttering: "E-Excuse me?"

The man shrugs. "Ah, don't mind me. You got that look in your eye, see. Like, you are so dead-set on getting things done no matter what the cost. Determination! Preservation! Stuff like that." He rolls his shoulders and his neck, which elicits an audible crack that makes her wince. "It's cliché, I know. I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. I have a knack for…what's the term…seeing beneath the underneath, but I've always had a knack for people watching. It's just so…interesting, wouldn't you say?"

Again, Homura is at a loss for words, but she decides to press on for posterity's sake. It would be rude of her to ignore a stranger, even one so odd and chatty as he. "I…guess so?" She didn't have the time to watch people. She only has the time needed to find Madoka, warn her of the dangers Kyubey presented, and then go hunt for the little white son of a bitch before he can make contact with her and present the opportunity to enact the contract. This fellow here? She thought for a certainty that he was wasting her time. "Look, I'm sorry, but I have something to do—"

"Of course you do! It can't wait!" says the man, and he smiles at the startled face she makes. "Then again, I don't know what it is you're really doing. That's all you, my friend. I don't read minds. It's just that look you have."

"And, pray tell, what sort of look do you think I'm wearing?"

"That you're a girl on a mission—a very important mission, I might add— and that if I were to cross your path in any way whatsoever, you'll have me on my ass in two seconds flat. Am I right on that?" He quirked an eyebrow at her, still with that knowing, smug smile on his lips.

Homura's eyes narrow. "Yes. Yes, you are. I would make you get out of my way, if that's what it takes."

"And so you would," says the man, nodding. "So you would. It's not just the look that makes a person. It's the attitude. It's the motives. It's their strength…and their weakness. With enough time, enough patience, I think anybody can succeed. It doesn't matter what the goal is. If your mental fortitude is great, your body able, your heart set, and your thoughts clear, why, I think he or she can do anything they have their mind set to."

Homura sighs. "I wish that were the case." His words summon a barrage of memories she both wants to forget and pretend they had never happened but at the same time must hold onto lest they repeat themselves—the temporal resets; the contracts; the warnings that went unheeded and the warnings that were heeded but by then were too late to change and the truth already hammered home; the crumbling of the Quintet as magi pitted herself against magi, aiming to kill, aiming to end the other's suffering; the destruction of Mitakihara in the wake of Walpurgisnacht, the timelines where Madoka died, the timelines where Madoka transformed into a witch, the times where Homura almost didn't want to rewind and simply wanted to sit back with Kyubey and watch the world be torn asunder by her friend's mindless, bottomless hunger. At least, in that capacity, they would die together and this foolish charade of trying to save Madoka from her own kindness would be put to an end.

But giving up isn't an option; it never was.

The man cocks his head at her. "Oh? You don't think so?"

"No. Not really," she said honestly. "It would appear that no matter how many times I try, the end results are still the same."

"And yet you persist."

"It's my choice. I want to persist."

"Regardless of the cost?"

"Regardless of the cost."

He nods again, slowly, sympathetically. "That's very admirable, little miss. I can respect that in a person."

"What makes you think my motives are admirable?" Homura asks, to which the man's eyebrows now lifted and switched from amusement to inquisitiveness. "For all you know, I could be on my way to doing something very heinous, like, for example, staking out a place to bomb or studying someone's daily routines so that when the chance arrives I may kill them in such a manner it would look accidental. I could be planning to shoot up a school and rack up a kill count, higher than what has been achieved in America the past couple decades. I could be planning to assassinate a very important politician because I do not agree with their views. If anything, you should be very cautious of someone you have never met before. I might be very determined, but I might also turn out to be someone far from what you think me to be."

The man smiles for the third time. "No, no. You're very much in the right, little miss. Caution is a good thing…but one look at you and I can tell you're not that kind of person."

"In what capacity, if I may ask?"

He picks himself up from the bench, straightens his back against the curve of the wood, throwing his arms over the back as though they are worms pinched onto a fishing hook as bait. He tosses one leg over the other and bounces it up and down, up and down. "Like we both said, you're a very determined young miss. If you wanted to, you could kick my ass right now and my condition thereafter would be of little if any concern to you if it meant the obstacles to your goal, whatever it may be, was cleared and out of the way. But you haven't; you've been very patient with me, even though you want to get a move on, and I'll say right now that I thank you for, well, taking the time out to have a palaver with a person as…heh…insignificant as me." He covers his mouth and laughs. "At the very least, this shows you are very human. A good person with good intentions, even if those intentions turn out to be very muddy and very grey. Or very bloody. I do not know. Does your road lead you to hell or to heaven?"

"Hopefully heaven," says Homura, thinking of what the world would be like when her mission is fulfilled: no more magi, no more resets, no more deaths, no more Incubators. Madoka would be a normal girl, living a normal life, and she would be happy. They would both be happy. "Heaven on earth." She reiterates. "I don't plan to die anytime soon."

"Ah, but some would say that heaven is for when you die. Some would say that there is no such thing as heaven or hell, and that the only hell we have is the one we're in right now: physicality, solidity, this one chance at life to live to our fullest, in love, in anger, and in pain. It really depends on what side of the religious spectrum you're on."

"Religion isn't high on my list of priorities." It is very, very far from her mind. "However, I do recall hearing the old adage, 'hell is what you make of it'. Perhaps the same can be said for heaven, as well. Perhaps we are living in it right now, imperfect though it might be."

"Heaven isn't supposed to be imperfect. That's what hell is for."

"You can be a good person who makes mistakes and still go to heaven. The really bad mistakes, the ones that are wont to put a black mark on your record and your soul, are what guarantee you a one-way trip to hell."

"Or jail."

"Or jail," Homura agrees, nodding. "That's another thing I don't intend on doing."

"Not dying and not getting caught," says the man. "Sounds like quite a mission, milady."

"I have a name, you know," Homura sighs, irritably. "You could at least introduce yourself, seeing as you're the one who struck up this conversation in the first place. Aren't you just a little bit curious? It doesn't look good on you to speak to someone if you don't mention your name, let alone ask for mine."

The young man places a hand over his heart in mock affront. "Why, you're right! I've been enjoying this conversation much—and the sound of my voice, too—that I've forgotten my manners. My poor old ma would've tanned my hide a good one. Very well, let's start over. My name is Matthias, your average North American. People-watching is my vocation; bird watching, too, but there's nothing quite like getting to know the ins and outs of your fellow human being. Other than that, there's really nothing special about me. What of you, little miss? What might your name be?"

"Homura Akemi," she says, using the American convention of introductions. "You could say my vocation also lies in people-watching…but that would be a lie. No, Matthias, my only vocation is my mission, which, I'm sorry to say, is of little concern to you. Not when you're racing against the clock.

"That important, huh?"

"Very. It's a matter of life and death." Not just for Madoka, but for her family, her friends, the planet, and the galaxy. This guy would be no exception. "Every second I spend not on my vocation, as we so put it, is a second wasted on preserving life, and if I were to fail that then the consequences," she blows air from her cheeks, "well, the consequences would be more than just 'dire'."

"Well then," Matthias says gently, "if that's the case, don't you think you should get a move on? Important matters shouldn't be put off to the very last minute."

Homura scowls. "No thanks to you."

"You've only yourself to blame because you choose to pursue the conversation. I'm just rolling with the punches. I mean, I don't mind stopping all of a sudden and just kick back here. It's a perfect day for cloud-watching. I can imagine boats and trains, maybe birds and dinosaurs."

"You really like watching things, don't you?"

"That's what eyes are for, Miss Homura," says Matthias, pointing at his own eyes with fingers in the shape of V. They are very peculiar eyes, just like her own, and it is something of note that, in the pit of her belly, feels both alien and familiar. His eyes are a brilliant shade of violet speckled with a colorful cocktail she can only describe as black and blue. She could easily put them off as contacts, but that would be a lie. No one in Japan—nay, no one on Earth—had purple eyes like they did. These were the real deal; it was something she didn't need to ask. "They're here to transcribe to the brain what we see and process the information so that we learn."

"And what else do your eyes show you?"

He taps a finger to his chin. "Hmmm…well, I see a girl standing in the middle of a cobblestone path, one of many in this park; and it's a good thing that hardly anybody's about to say 'excuse me' or 'out of my way', or maybe nothing at all."

"That's stating the obvious," says Homura. "What happened to seeing beneath the underneath?"

"You're right, Miss! How could I forget? Well, I've already made my prior statements—about your determination, your convictions, your grey nobility. But do you know what else I see? I see that you might be in need of assistance."

Her eyes narrow again. "I have no need of it."

"Why not? Didn't you just say your mission is a matter of life and death? Why not accept a helping hand? I mean, maybe the mission is 'little concern' to me, but surely a life is? You don't need a reason to help a stranger in need."

"It's something I have to do alone. I," _don't know you, I don't trust you, you wouldn't understand, my powers don't extend to bringing other people back in time, you won't remember this anyway if I did go back,_ she thinks, and wants to say, but instead she presses on with, "I just have to." It's lame, but it is the truth.

Matthias levels her a questioning stare. "Do you have to? Truly have to?"

"Yes. I'm the only person who can do this." To lessen the blow, she adds, "I'm sorry. I appreciate your offer, but I must decline."

He hangs his head and sighs. "For shame! I was really hoping you'd allow the pleasure of being at your side. I can do more than just watch for creepy shadows and chat away in your ears."

"I'm sure you can." She waves the statement aside with a dismissive hand.

The corner of his lip quirks upward, and when he lifts his head both corners are raised and his teeth bared in a boyish grin. A grin fit for a wolf. "Well~" he begins; he pushes himself off the bench and doubles over, brushing off his jeans. "If you change your mind, just let me know. Here," he tacks on just as she's about to protest. He straightens up and holds out to her a small, purple, rectangular business card. Homura doesn't want to, but her hands move and accept the card from his callused fingers. The print is even smaller, so she brings it up to her face to decipher what the words—dark blue on light purple—have to say:

 **MATTHIAS HANSON  
PROFESSIONAL WANDERER & SIGHT-SEEING EXTRAORDINARE**

1-(888)-888-8888

 _I am that is—my sword will wield for me._

She finishes reading and balks. She reads the card again and still balks. She looks up at Matthias, who stands patiently before her, one hand jammed in a pocket, the other toying with the chain links attached to the belt loops. "Are you for real? What kind of number is this?"

"It's a working number, don't worry," he says.

"This is an American number."

"So it is."

"But you don't have a Japanese phone number?"

He shrugs. "I came here on short notice." He fidgets under the hard, cold stare she gives him. "Seriously!"

Homura sighs. "At least set up an email address if you're serious about this. I don't do long distance calls." She doesn't do phone calls or emails period, but he didn't have to know that.

"Hey now, that's my line! But, you know, just keep it in mind and on hand. You never know when you might need it."

She highly doubts it, but, "Yeah. I will. Thanks, I guess."

"You are most welcome! Everybody gets one." He taps at the business card. "If I don't answer, somebody else will. There are many others like me who'd be glad to come to your assistance. Anybody's assistance. Long distance might cost you a pretty penny, but our service is free of charge, I should like to add."

"…There are more of you?" she ventures disbelievingly. There were more weirdoes like him in the world?

"Why, yes. Some are quite talkative like me. Others are…pretty reserved. Focused. Dedicated. It's alright, though; some things we just like to keep to ourselves."

"Oh." That seemed simple enough. "Alright. But what about the name of your service? I see you don't have one."

Matthias's smile broadens, eyes twinkling mischievously. "We're still coming up with that. Have to make it sound original! Flashy! Intriguing! It helps trying to beat out the competition. But fret not! We have all the time in the world to think of a proper name."

"And your…ahem, company logo? Shouldn't you have that, too?" Homura flashes him both sides of the business card.

"Yes, that too. That too. We're, uh, not really artists."

"Then it sounds like you have work to do. Make it your…vocation."

Matthias chuckles. "Clever girl. Well then, as much as I enjoy our palaver, I'm afraid I will have to take my leave. I just remembered there's a bit of something I have to take care, and as soon as possible; the boss will rip my head clean off my shoulders if I don't. I wish you luck on your mission, Miss Homura, whatever it may be. Perhaps luck will be on your side." Then he turns around and walks away, raising a black gloved hand in the air and tipping her off with a perfunctory wave. Homura watches his back until he disappears around the bend, and then returns to staring at the card.

* * *

And later that night, in her apartments, as she is getting ready for bed and—eventually—another day of lurking in Mitakihara's shadows, chasing Kyubey, and observing Madoka from afar, Homura will look at the card again. She's surprised she's kept it on her person this long. She's not one to go around making random conversation with strangers in the park on a day off from school, nor is she wont to accept help from someone who has no idea how much she's putting at stake trying to protect the one girl she calls friend from a fate that is, quite literally, worse than death. People are ignorant, and that is for the best. She wants no one else to get involved.

Still, the card, plain as it is, intrigues her, and on that night she sets her shield that she has been polishing off to the side and plucks the card off the nightstand. Reads the name on the card—MATTHIAS HANSON. Reads the silly titles underneath—PROFESSIONAL WANDERER AND SIGHT-SEEING EXTRAORDINAIRE. Reads the number below it—1-(888)-888-8888. Reads the italicized line that may or may not be a reference to some fantasy book she's never read in her short life— _I am that is—my sword will wield for me._ Her fingers brush the card, which feels like it's been made from construction paper.

They brush something bumpy. Embossed.

Homura turns it over.

Taking up the majority of the space is a stylized eye, drawn with two arching lines—one on the top, one on the bottom—and a circle in between. In the light of the lamp it is a glaring red, but in the shadow it is a dark, gloomy blue, almost black hue.

Underneath the eye are runes. One would venture a guess and say they are Old Nordic, perhaps even Elder Futhark, or a mixture of both, but they are not.

Memories slumbering in the recesses locked away from the mind in the present stirs awake and resurfaces, peeking over her shoulder and, against her will, translate them for her. They spell out a single word:

 **ZURVAN**

She scoffs. "Get real." That life was gone. The life before, long ago, in a time removed from her own, when the stars winked out and fire rained from the heavens onto nine hundred years of deeply ingrained tradition.

When the casteless struggled to make ends meet, stealing and whoring and warring and envying the bastard highborn with their houselords and baseborn children from up above in their mansions and castles as they drank and feasted and passed legislature on laws that eased the burdens on their taxes and hefted them onto the backs of the pack mules in the streets below. That life was gone.

When the Talonite warned her of the risks and costs her mission would impose upon her that day in the Church of the King of the Hunt and, later on, when the War was in full swing and Neptune had not yet collapsed to its prodigy's ignorance and she had confronted the Archmeister in the open ley line deep in the bowels of the Manakademia. That life was gone.

When she had gazed into the Brink, that life was gone, and when that Child of Aeon had approached her in those final hours, blade drawn and cloak trailing behind like a second skin, sloughing on the cracked and broken ground, that life was _gone_. The old life has no bearing on this one now.

But it wasn't completely without merits. The Brink still flourished within her. Madoka had reincarnated. She still has her friend.

She still has a chance.

She has all the time in the world.

"I'll do whatever it takes to protect you," Akemi Homura tells herself, crumbling up the card in a tight, white-knuckled fist. _"Anything."_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes1:** I apologize for not getting this out a few days ago. I have been busy with work, and other than this coming Saturday and next Friday this week will be rife with long hours and not too much time to write. I've been meaning to put up new ("new" as in "two months old and counting") drawings on my DeviantArt page, something which I've neglected to do, but again, there's my schedule to attend to.  
 **Notes2:** I can't say I like how I wrote the ending, but in all honesty I couldn't think of how better I could present it. So there it shall remain, where its repercussions are felt in A Passing Glance and will continue to do so in future installments. Although I will say I enjoyed coming up with those walls of text further down the page that consist of Saturnite-Plutonian lore.

* * *

 _"See the puppet on its strings_  
 _Hanging on the rack_  
 _The peeling paint_  
 _The splintered wood_  
 _The loose joints_  
 _See the dust_  
 _That which it holds_  
 _In the hollows between its fingers_  
 _And in the thinning valleys of its nails;_  
 _Caked in the ridges of its lips,_  
 _The windswept plain of its brow_  
 _And in the tracks the crows left behind_  
 _When the windows froze over_  
 _At the apex of winter…."_

* * *

 _"Everything we have done or will do, we are going to do over and over and over again."_

* * *

"Miss Homura?

"Miss Homura, can you hear me?"

Her head snaps up. She looks around.

That voice.

That voice sounds…familiar. She's heard it before…but where?

When?

She looks around. She imagines herself sitting upon her throne atop the cliff overlooking Mitakihara, surrounded by Clara Dolls. She imagines them pirouetting, dancing, leaping and frolicking among the flowers; and they sing—they sing now, chanting "GOTT! IS! TOT! GOTT! IS! TOTT!" over and over, their voices fading into the ether. She imagines Kyubey lying in the grass, writhing, lamenting in a hurting, piteous moan "Why? It hurts. Make it stop. Please, Homura, please."

There is only darkness.

Darkness, darkness. Eternal darkness.

"Who is that?" she calls out, turning her head left and right. "What do you want?"

"You don't remember me, little miss?" says the voice. A man, she surmises. There's a man here. A young one, too, with that high, reedy drawl. "We met once upon a time, a long time ago…many timelines ago, I'll warrant. It was…halfway to your one-hundredth jump, yes? Yes. Yes, that is so. We were in a park, talking about heaven and hell. Oh, and watching all sorts of things. People, birds, clouds. Does that sound familiar to you?"

She tries to reach through time, through the universe, to memories half-buried, dusty, fragmented and forgotten. She ignores the flashes of guilt, shame, hate and self-loathing as she goes further and further back, scrounging, struggling.

Then: "…It's you. You're…that guy. Matthias."

"Ah, so you do remember! I am glad, Miss Homura. For a moment, I feared you would not and simply be content to refer me as 'that guy'."

"You were always 'that guy'. We were two strangers, and yet you spoke to me as though we were friends. This time, this world of mine, is no different now than it was back then."

She can hear the wince in his voice. "Surely you don't mean that?"

"You're just some guy asking to help me with something that was impossible for you to do, and here you are, claiming to have powers only I have."

A pause. "Yes. Yes, there is that."

"You're a liar, Matthias. You're simply spouting nonsense."

"Am I?" he poses gently. "Nay, Miss Homura, if anybody's a liar, it would be you. Granted I did leave out a few details, but I did speak the truth when I said I and my brethren would help you. Our availability is still very much open."

"To hell with your 'availability'. Look at what I've made for myself." She attempts to swing an arm out, to show him the expanse of the world she has created, the Cycle she has rewritten, the quietude of peace. So she does, and the result is her swinging it out too wildly, too fervently, and she almost falls face-first into the grass she is fumbling around in. "See? This is all me. I did this. I made the world a better place. I have these shitheels rodents wrapped around my fingers. I made Madoka happy. Everyone happy. I didn't need you and your separatist mooks then to get around. I don't need you now. And why would I? I am become something more than the frail shell I used to be. I have confronted the destiny the Brink bestowed upon me at that first glance and embraced it wholeheartedly, and so long as Madoka remains where she is I will maintain this balance for all eternity. I have finally shed some light onto this miserable, ill-begotten darkness that had infested this universe. Such is the role I play in the Law of Cycles."

"And yet there is still the threat of entropy. How will you combat it? There are no more Puella Magi to offset the inevitable. All the curses in the world that you have bestowed upon the Incubators…don't you think this will backfire?"

"I am become Light…and I become Darkness. I will simply smite the universe and create it anew—"

"Only for it to happen again, so long as you keep the dogs on their leash." A scuffle of feet, a canvas-flicker of leather and ironed jean material. "It's not just a Law of Cycles, Miss Homura. It's a flat circle. An endless knot crafted from falsities. Humanity is only happy and without sin because you made them that way. Without conflict, there can be no resolution. Without poverty or illness, there can be no research. Without any of this, there will be no advancement." Now, more softly, "You gave them salvation…and stagnation. That isn't what I would call 'paradise'."

"No one suffered!" she cries. "No crime, illness, war or death could stop them from doing whatever they pleased! I gave those wide-eyed sheep the promises they desired!"

"That may have been the case then, but how long would that have lasted? How long…before the Mother Goddess awoke? You had but a fraction under your yoke; it was only a matter of time before she remembered, and now that she is come forth again, the world has returned to the state it was once in. Not only that, but the cosmic balance has been thrown into upheaval—there can be but one Power in control of the Law. Her reemergence will slowly weaken the hold you have on the Incubators. The damage, however, has already been done. It's been three years; they are…'infected', so to say, with emotions. Some of them have been entertaining the idea of contracting themselves into tackling the latest incarnation of the world's ills—Witches, nightmares, wraiths…whatever it is an Incubator will become upon despair—"

"Good! This is what they get for treating us like cattle since the first girl thought herself brave and contracted with the first Incubator who caught her eye! Let them suffer for their folly!"

"You need them, Miss Homura, and—as much as the displeasure is mutual—they need you. Most of them are lost and confused, unable to comprehend the awakening you have bestowed upon them."

"Awakening?" she parrots, the word coming out in a serpentine hiss. "Awakening? This isn't enlightenment! This is—!"

"I _know_ ," Matthias stresses patiently, "but for good or for ill, this is what has come to pass, and if you want your world, your universe, to return to the way it was before you're going to need each other's help…and the Zurvan Wake. As you are now, you won't get anything done. How will you find the Mother and the Quartet, blind and weak and helpless as, dare I say, a babe? You are much worse off than you were after the Diaspora."

"I have spent the better part of eight years of my life jumping through time and back again to get to where I'm at today," she growls, and she feels her lips peeling back against her gums. The Clara Dolls edge closer to her; they have long since stopped singing, and she imagines them glaring openly, defiantly, at the Wakener. "When I needed help the most, no one came. No one _wanted to_ —not my family, not my friends, not even the fucking beggars that boasted they were going to make the highborn pay, only to be physically and mentally beaten into the ground. And what of the Children? Where were they? Off fucking about in some other timestream or doing backdoor deals with rival houses. And what about you, boy? Where were you? Probably still an itch in your father's balls, I'll bet! You and the rest of your ilk could've easily altered the course of history and our lives for the better! Yet you didn't, and here you are, some thousand and uncounted years later, extending a rotting olive branch in a gesture of, what, atonement? Spare me your generosity and rot in hell!" She swipes her hand and hits only air.

For a long while, there is silence between them. There is the ruffling of grass as the Dolls glide closer to her. There are Kyubey's cries, which have subsided to mewling whimpers. There is the sensation of blood running hot in her veins and her heart beating in her head and behind her eyes and she squeezes them harder than before.

"Homura," Matthias says, and she looks to where she believes his voice is coming from. He is calm, serious, so unlike the eccentric in the park. "Back then, we were drones. We were not…wholly separated from each other, much less the Hegemony. What we were ordered to do, we followed. It was not until Beryl went beyond the Fringes and conducted her unholy ritual did some of us begin to realize how expendable we were…and how much more we could've done if we were free from the chains they bound us to.

"Homura, I asked you once if you knew what road your mission would take you, and you said 'hopefully heaven'…or, at least, 'heaven on earth'. During that time, I didn't have such a thing going for me. None of us did, really; you can learn a lot from studying people and things, but it doesn't amount to much of anything if you can't put that knowledge to good use. In truth, that was all we did. The Queen's Diaspora removed the Doors to the Brink farther away from the sphere of reality than it was, and even awakened we could not see past the strands we were placed upon.

"But back to my point: I can change that for you. _We_ can. I told my brethren about your mission, and for a long time we thought about how to provide a solution for you. Not everyone was receptive to the idea at first. They were convinced that, as you were not a friend of the Hegemony, and by and large the Grand Solar Alliance, that we should leave you to your own devices. After all, you had peered into the Brink, a crime punishable by death, and since everyone in the Alliance had been relocated in the Diaspora, you would not remember your past and die a sinner, for not even in death can one escape the Judgment of the Old Gods. Eventually, we reached a consensus: we would watch you—study you, your jumps, your motivations, but just as we were learning about you, you had awakened. You had suppressed that part of yourself…and here I was, getting impatient with how slow things were going and approached you in hopes that you would join us. Oh, I knew there was the possibility you would remember, but in all honesty I was hoping you wouldn't and I would introduce you to everyone. It'd be just like in all those stories I used to read growing up—of the everyman ripped from his world to another, doubted by many but believed by all in their secret hearts to be the hero they deserved and needed, the fabled Chosen One come to give them hope and a better chance at happiness. It's cheesy, I know!

"…But this story isn't like that. From the moment you began to harbor hate, you chose the path to walk on…and look where it's got you. The Mother returned, the Quartet awakened and on the lamb, the world seeped in sin. For all your 'godhood', not even you could foresee this. The breaking of the Cycle has left you vulnerable. If they wanted to, Madoka's Knights could have easily dispatched you and rewrite the Law…and yet they chose not to. Perhaps, in spite of all its troubles, they believe it still worth saving. They won't put its fate on the line by having Armageddon take place here."

"Get to the point," she rumbles, finally managing to sit herself down on the grass. "What could you possibly offer that will change my mind?"

"I was wondering when you'd stop me," he says, and there is that smile in his voice. "Little miss, we can't guarantee we'll give you heaven, but we can get you out of hell." There is a rustle of clothing, the rattling of chains, and then, like a spark of fire igniting the dark, the sound of a lock creaking open. "The boss was mad at me for striking out on my own last time, but he saw how interested I was in your case and figured he'd assign me the sole protector of Zurvan's Eyes. At least, that's what legend dictates; Bart got a look at Satun and Pluto and all its satellites and colonies a while back and said there's almost nothing left from the Silver Millennium, not even the murals and the Clockwork Arch! However, I do know this: among the upper echelons of Saturnite-Plutonian society, only the person whose magic surpassed all others could inherit them; they could be disabled as well, so long as their magic was strong and stable. In exchange for possessing the Eyes, they would lose their own. The process was not without its drawbacks: most that were selected by the Duumvirate were driven mad by the vastness of the planes, how _chaotic_ they are. Some were cannibalized from the inside-out by their own magic, rendered unstable by the implantation of _abysso dynamic_. The rest were made little more than vegetables and forced to be put out of their misery. Regardless, the power in these Eyes has never wavered. They have been passed down every few generations, to the lowliest baseborn child to the high-ranking politician, and those who survived had little choice but to forsake their position and become the Watcher of the Brink. Supposedly this was going on even before the Duumvirate established their nine-hundred-year reign, and so it continued—well up until the War. Do you remember who that person was?"

She harrumphs. "How could I forget? Old age and wisdom can't bury the shame of being burdened by the responsibility of the task. She always wore that dumb blindfold, not because of the fear the Eyes would instill in the common rabble but because she couldn't stand to look herself in the mirror. Knowing full well that the life she lived before had been ripped away, damned from the moment of conception…yet still, she persisted, right to the end."

"She was a loyal Watcher."

"She was a weak Watcher, to have fallen to a mere 'child'. On top of that, she—and her predecessors—did nothing to give our people the 'hope' and 'betterment' we desired. They deserved to die. I only wished it was I and not the Magistrix that brought the Hegemony to its knees."

"Aye," says Matthias, tone emotionless. "Their greatest flaw was underestimating its own people. It is how all great nations and its all great people fall. It was only by dint and grace of our Lord Zurvan that I and my brethren retained some fractals of memory. A part of me even hopes the Children of Aeon and Chronos' Chosen will see that our dichotomy is just as reasonable as theirs and set aside their arms…but I've long since accepted it'll never happen. We are too set in our ways…and I am too faithful to abandon my friends or my Lord."

"It doesn't matter anymore," she says, taking pains to remember these names. "This time is no different than the last, other than finally being free to do as _you_ please, not as _they_ do."

"I suppose you're right. Well then, Miss Homura, what shall we do with these Eyes? I know you have little love for the past, but…still…." Metal jingles, chains rattle, leather whispers.

The Dolls chatter, barely coherent but incomprehensible. She ignores them and contents herself with flexing her hands upon the grass, thinking. "These Eyes…will they grant me more than just the vision of the planes?"

"Yes. Technically, for those who were not born blind or were not blinded throughout the course of their life, they lost what vision they could see—the mundane—and gained the vision to see beneath the underneath—the transmundane. Bearing the Eyes merely grants you more than you will ever see without them, more so than Kagutsuchi's Second Sight. However, Zurvan's Sight is much sharper, more aware. The planes will always be within your periphery, as will the Void."

"The Void? You mean Chaos."

"Perhaps. It depends on how you interpret it. To us, it is neither kind nor cruel; it just is, but to mankind…well, it is anything but."

"So if I should take these Eyes, I will know for sure where Madoka and the others ran off to?"

"…You might."

"Might?"

"You were but a mortal girl who received her power simply for peering into the Brink. It is also why, in spite of your godhood, you were struck down by Madoka's awakening. The Children, the Wakeners, and the Chosen…we were born with it, but that is a different story for a different time."

"Another carrot to dangle by its string, eh? You really know how to set up _a potential sale_."

"You make it sound like it's a bad thing, little miss," he says, and there is that wince again. It may as well be his defining trait, unable to hide his emotions beneath the oddball façade. "Do you really have any other choice?" Perhaps he could see the frown pulling at her lips, for he quickly adds, "Please, Homura. Let us help. We can go our ways after this, if you want. Just let us help this once."

" _NUR DIESES EINE MAL,"_ the Dolls chant. _"NUR DIESES EINE MAL."_ There is the sound of feet gliding through grass, the sound of rhythmic clapping. _"NUR DIESES EINE MAL! NUR DIESES EINE MAL!"_

"No…" Kyubey groans, voice still wracked in pain but louder, stronger. "N-No! Don't you dare, Homura! D-Don't you d-dare make us…m-m-make us…!"

"You already are," Homura growls lowly, "and you _will_." She gropes for purchase and slowly picks herself off the ground. She stands, brushes off her dress with fumbling, shaking hands. "Just this once, Matthias. Give Them to me. We set off once the magic is stabilized."

"What of the world?"

"What of it? It has already been tainted. Let my Judgment be swift and their pain short-lived. There is no room for such impurity in my realm. Only when Madoka is secured and her Quartet attended to will I claim the Law of Cycles for my own and build anew—a utopia free of suffering…and the influence of Puella Magi. Now, do as I bid! I have no time to waste and all of eternity to scour the transmundane."

"As you say, Miss Homura. Now, if you would be so kind as to hold still. This will hurt." There is the sound of the lock being undone, of the leather creaking and the grass being disturbed, and then again of the leather unfolding. Behind the darkness of her eyes, a faint glow abides like the first star in the night sky.

It is tiny. Weak.

Beautiful.

There were countless others like that star, she thinks, back on Saturn. They bring to mind of a night, those thousand and unaccounted years past, when the Mitaki family were on a business trip (perhaps the only trip) to the Hegemony for some reason or another she could not recall. They had brought their daughter with them, a curious if meek girl of similar age who had wandered too far out of the comforts of the open public spaces and into the slums where the bastards and the bitches held open season upon each other and the drugs and booze and prostitutes exchanged hands under cover of shade and moonglow. Homura had snatched out of those dirty, gangrenous jaws and took her upon a grassy knoll—just like this one, now that she recalls—and together they watched the stars wheel above the night sky and the airliners cutting pink contrails and blinking red lights through the unmoving lines of traffic intersecting the skyways and glass tunnels. They spoke for a time—mostly about House Mitaki, Luna and its whimsical landmarks, the royal family and the Terran prince and his retinue who would come to visit the Queen's daughter, the Mau-maiden who was not only Head Scientist but her friend and servant and the Mau-tom who acted as an ambassador for their sister planet Venus—and while Homura could've told her about the numerous changes of the so-called guard of the Underdark bazaar during rush hour or the schedules of all the fences in their hideouts and speakeasies, Madoka's stories were far more interesting. It was no secret among the Alliance that the Hegemony possessed a laissez-faire attitude and preferred to keep their planetary affairs personal and under wraps, and that any rumors and gossip the offworlders made about it were not far from the truth. What would be the point? Homura made no mention of her own life and instead listened to these strange tales, fascinated and envious and yearning, but she quashed those feelings. She would have rather stayed and keep company for as long as she could, but there was Madoka's family and the shadows were just beginning to lengthen, and so she had forced to cut the palaver short and deliver her down the safest routes back to the apartments where her parents were staying.

She would see her again a few more times until the Negaforce pierced through the Fringes and scorched the Hegemony biospheres, leaving behind barren wastelands swamped in felfire and Void energy—but she had long since left that rock by that time.

Everything else that happened afterward was like watching the domino effect in action. One by one the planets were torn asunder. One by one the stars went out.

That was back then.

This is now.

 _Let it be so,_ she thinks, and when the Eyes are inserted into the sockets where her own were, there is an explosion of color, a kaleidoscope of rainbows and light and warmth and coolness spreading like the coastal breeze on those bygone, forgotten shores. There is an explosion of movement, of sound, of flickering light and darkness apt to give lesser creatures the grand mal of all grand mal seizures, a sensation of vertigo, of being twisted inside and out, of being ripped in twain and spilling, spilling, endlessly into the ether and being filled, filled to the brim, filled to overflowing until she is fit to burst.

And then there is pain—pure, unfiltered, unimaginable pain, all throughout her eyes and seeping deep within her head. She wants to scream her lungs raw and bloody, raise her hands and dig deep gouges into the skin and tear the red, meaty chunks off. She wants to look away from the _otherness_ being staring back at her, the back seat, tingling notion that it was watching her, evaluating her, ignoring her all the same—and hungering. It hungered and wondered.

Instead, she gasps. Sweet, nighttime air fills her lungs and sends her into a brief coughing fit.

When she recovers, she blinks. Her vision is blurry. Green like runny watercolor paint. There is a pair of feet planted in that muddy palette before her, lined with many-holed straps and belt buckles. She lifts her gaze, past the faded, washed jeans crisscrossed in fragile silver trace, rolo and twisted link chains, over the high-collared purple shirt and beaten denim jacket whose gloved hands bear an empty lockbox, and the immaculate mauve cloak.

There is Matthias's face, slack-jawed and amazed.

There is Kyubey on his back, fur ruffled and head craned far back that he glares upside-down at her.

There are the Dolls—tooth-riders, tooth-walkers, ballerinas, tin soldiers all—that titter and mumble and sob. Some are staring up at the sky.

Akemi Homura blinks and follows their gaze. It settles on a sliver of moon, the rest a blackened ghost obscured by the shadow of an unseen sun. Her Eyes narrow and go out of focus: searching, accumulating, shifting and archiving information, thoughts, actions, outcomes.

"Miss…Miss Homura?" Matthias ventures. "Are you okay? If there's anything wrong—"

"Wrong? No, Matthias, this feels _right_." She lowers Her Eyes and they rest on him, take in the subtle quaking jimmying throughout his posture like a tuning fork, the increasing whiteness in the pads of his fingertips. An appropriate reaction, and in the dark, cooling recesses of Her Heart where the last embers of humanity burns, She smiles. "And they're not far. No, not far at all. You know this, don't you?"

There's a click in his throat as he swallows. "Yes. I do."

"So this means you also know who's helping them, don't you?"

He nods, more confidently. "Yes."

Homura nods as well and looks again to the sky, the far side of the new moon. "Even in death, she can't afford to rest. Hmph, she should know not to make the same mistake twice." She shrugs. "No matter; if she wants to have another go, then let her. At the very least, I'll finally get around to showing her what I think about her reign." She closes Her Eyes, breathes deep, exhales, and opens them. "After all this time," she adds calmly. "I look forward to it."


	3. inheritors: ein von null

**Notes1:** Beep-boop, here's a surprise update - and the true epilogue. Change of plans, so to say. Needn't worry; it's simply a turning of the mind.  
 **Notes2:** This is indeed the last chapter of this particular installment, but the story is far from over. We are only just beginning, and eventually I plan to get back to _A Passing Glance_ sooner rather than later.  
 **Notes3:** And, as a final side note, I keep forgetting to mention (the majority of) my references where they're due. The story's title comes from a generic response you get from worgen NPCs from _World of Warcraft_ , _"Let the light of the new moon guide you."_

* * *

 **\- inheritors: ein von null -**

Nozomi gasps awake, panting. Her heart's galloping in her chest, beating hooves against the wall of the mattress. Eyes roam left and right, taking in the surroundings: the television set, the walk-in closet, the island separating kitchenette and living room, the glass sliding door leading out onto the balcony. Nighttime. Azuba-Juuban. Tokyo Tower blooming like a Christmas tree on the horizon.

Life.

Safety.

Reality.

She is slick with sweat, hair plastered to her forehead, body drowning in the heat beneath the sheets. There is warmth at her back, solidity, comfort, and its shape rises and falls in the rhythm of deep sleep.

Mikami.

Nozomi squeezes her eyes shut, berates herself for almost forgetting her friend. She bites the inside of her cheek, relishes the elicited pain, and opens her eyes again. She quashes the urge to throw the sheet off her and onto Mikami, instead forcing herself to kick them to the foot of the bed. She sits up, swings her legs over the side, shakes her head to ward off the lingering drowsiness. When she achieves a sort of bastardized wakefulness, she ushers over to the writing desk by the glass door. Pulls out the chair as quiet as can be and opens the drawer all the way until she has it in both hands. She sets it down on the floor, leans forward to reach inside and undo the lock at the very back and slowly, slowly, extracts the smaller drawer into focus. She sits in the chair, retrieves the journal from within and sets it on the desk. Pulls out the pen, uncaps it, undoes the clasp, and opens it. Turns the pages, skims the dates—from the time they were adopted by Miss Iris and left the orphanage to settling into the apartment and starting freshman year at high school the next day to job hunting and finding employment two years later—and finds a blank page.

Nozomi sets the tip of the pen to the paper and stops. Hesitates.

She glances at the last entry on the previous page—March 8, 2017. A week ago today. It reminds her of a passage in Shakespeare's play _Julius Caesar_ , of how Caesar joked that the ides of March had come, and how the seer replied that, though it may be so, they were not gone. The memory brings a chill to her, deeper, darker, and older than the current coolness of the recent weather.

She bites her nails into the flesh of her palm, loosens, and writes the date, the time. Below it, the entry—her strokes messy and hurried, the memory eluding by the second:

 _March 15, 2016  
1:50 A.M._

 _Dreamed again. This one different, just like all the others, but no less interconnected._

 _I—_ she pauses, wracks her brain for details— _I dreamed of machines. Machines on the moon. Huge, boxy, like those supercomputers I see in science books. They looked old—really old, by today's standards, maybe older—but…they looked powerful. More…advanced. I don't know how, but they were. They were very powerful._

 _I saw the computers. They were under a dilapidated building without a roof. There were Corinthian pillars, water pipes, the top half of a tall water fountain lying in a crater. They hid the computers. They still ran. I got the feeling they don't do so as often as they used to, but they do. When was the last time they did? If it was recent, I can't tell; the dust was everywhere._

 _The light blinked on across the boards: green, yellow, red and blue. They blinked and flashed. The processors booted up. The fans hummed. The screens lightened and lines scrawled across it, down it, scrolling upward. They felt…familiar, like I've seen them before in all those science fiction/fantasy novels Mikami likes to read, all simple and ancient but in hindsight meaningfully complex…but I haven't. And even if I did, I couldn't read them. I didn't bother to._

 _But then I did understood, because they started showing up in English, the last line at the bottom of the screen:_

 _ETERNITY MAIN ONLINE_

 _Then, below that, more words:_

 _TRANSMUNDANE CORRUPTION LOCATED AT COORDINATES 92-01-57-00009, 83-05-77-005561_

 _UPLINK ALPHA CODE: WHITE SENT_

 _EMERGENCY PROTOCOL INITIATED_

 _UPLOADING…._

 _Then I found myself outside the room, bunker, chamber, whatever it was. I was outside the building, on a marbled path leading to the fractured steps climbing upwards. There was a design on the ground—something round and multilayered. It looked as though it could be retracted? Like those antique telescopes pirates used a dinosaur's age ago. I expected it to…to change form somehow. Slide up, slide down, revealing something that was otherwise hidden. Maybe another of those underground rooms. Maybe a nuke._

 _Instead, there was a click—very small, very minute. I had barely caught it when the hologram materialized and took on the shape of a person._

"Nozomi?" She jumps, almost scratching a black comet across the page. Glances over her shoulder and sees Mikami looking at her, bleary-eyed and out of it. "What's wrong? What time is it?"

"Just a bad dream, is all," she tells her. "Go back to sleep. I'll be right there."

"'Kay," she mumbles. Nozomi thinks she hears Mikami say "Don't stay up too late" or something of that nature, but she doesn't. She's fast asleep, and for a few minutes Nozomi sits and watches her breathe. Finally, she turns back around, takes up the pen, and continues:

 _I didn't get a good look, but again…there was that sense of familiarity, not a sense of closeness that I have with Mikami. It felt more than just a passing glance. I felt that I should know this person._

Nozomi stops, again hesitating. Replays the dream in her head. A stone fist seizes her intestines. _That I should hate this person. But what reason do I have to hate someone I've never even met?_

She stares at the page, wondering if she should put those thoughts into words. Minutes tick by, and she adjusts her grip on the pen. _This shouldn't feel real,_ she dictates in brackets, several lines down. _I should be in bed, dreaming, maybe lying wide awake and staring at the ceiling, wondering how I'm going to make the most of my day—not trying to capture recollections of space opera crock my mind is surely making up._

"I shouldn't be doing this," she says, but that's a lie. It has always been a lie. She will write again the next time there is a dream, one that is as vivid and surreal as the rest that came before, and she will keep writing afterwards. To what ends and for what purpose, even she does not know.

Nozomi adds that instead and resigns herself to tapping the pen's tip against the paper. Then: _But I do know one thing: Mikami can't find out. It sounds stupid now as I'm writing and it's going to keep sounding stupid later today when I wake up and read it, but it's true. She doesn't know about the compartment, so all I have to do is keep my mouth shut. They're just dreams. How many times do dreams come true, anyway? Déjà vu is one thing, precognition another. This, however? I don't know what it is, but it's neither of those two. There's nothing to them, no rhyme or reason. When I wake up again, Mika and I will go about our day as usual and I'll forget this ever happened._ _I'll even bet this will wind up being a part of the dream, too._

"As it should be." She closes the book and leans back against the chair, blows out a breath between her cheeks. The moon is out today, round and full and snow-white as a cue ball on a global black velvet pool table. It speaks to her in a way she can't quite describe, as a muse is often wont to nudge the grey ball in its resident writer's head to conjure new ideas and expanded universes for whatever legendarium or cosmology he or she is struggling with. It tells her, _Go search for these answers._ It tells her, _There's a lot more to this than you think there is. What have you got to lose?_

 _Other than some much needed rest? I can't say I'll miss out on much of anything._ Nozomi sighs again, runs a hand up past her dangling forelocks and through her hair. _It's nothing. It's absolutely nothing. You're worrying too much over this, girl. Go on. Go back to sleep._

She returns the journal to its drawer, closes the compartment, and crawls back into bed. She covers herself in the sheet and rolls over on her side, facing away from the glass door. Mikami is as well, her breathing quiet and imperceptible.

Nozomi stares at her back, wondering what kind of dreams, if any, she's having. Then, so as not to wake her, she wraps an arm around her waist and molds herself to her. By now the sweat has cooled and evaporated, and the warmth of skin against skin is a welcoming, reassuring balm. She presses her face to her hair, breathes in the scent of berries mixed with fresh linen, and drifts away.


End file.
